


Strange Human Emotions

by aruarudayo



Series: Not In Kansas Anymore [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Empath Dirk, M/M, POV Second Person, mutant AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-19
Updated: 2014-08-19
Packaged: 2018-02-13 19:31:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2162415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aruarudayo/pseuds/aruarudayo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another Mutant AU: Dirk is an extremely powerful empath but grew up learning to block his powers bc the hypersensitivity caused headaches and he never considered the understanding of other's emotions to be that necessary. However, a bad break-up with Jake causes him to re-evaluate the concept.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strange Human Emotions

**Author's Note:**

> prompt from meruz

Striders don’t like emotions. They lead to confusing situations that you would much rather not deal with and vulnerabilities that get you hurt. 

That is, of course, if you’re just dealing with what’s in your own head, but you were born a masochist that just had to feel the emotions of everyone around you. 

Bro tells you that, as a kid, you would cry all the time, even if there wasn’t anything wrong with you, with good reason, you both suppose; coming into this world and being assaulted by things you were too young to understand would make even the toughest of people break. Happiness, sadness, love—you couldn’t understand them because you felt them alongside five other emotions coming at you from your neighbors, classmates, people passing by on the street ten stories below. 

Then there was the pain, the awful sensation that perpetually settled between your eyes from information overload. Even when you started to differentiate between each emotion, the headache was the same. You couldn’t sleep, you couldn’t think, sometimes you couldn’t breathe, you were so overwhelmed.

You didn’t break, but you came close.

After Bro realized you weren’t like other kids, he moved you to an island isolated enough that you could learn to suppress the emotions. In the process, you sort of ended up suppressing your own as well, but in the long run, this didn’t seem like a problem. You didn’t need to understand emotions to live normally, or so you thought. 

Then you met Jake. Jake, with his bright green eyes and equally bright smile. Jake, who wore his heart on his sleeve. Jake, who followed you back to Texas once you could function normally, not that you ever really told him of your power. 

Perhaps he would have understood better if you had.

You liked Jake; he was the first friend you made when you were stable enough to partake in the strange human emotion called friendship. Okay, you don’t consider friendship to be an emotion per se, but seeing friends certainly felt different than seeing regular people, so you figured you could equate it to one. 

Love was just a step above friendship, so that’s why you didn’t realize you loved him until he figured it out himself. Dating seemed like the natural thing to do, so when he asked you out, you said yes without realizing the ramifications of being a boyfriend. 

He would come to you with a frown on his face and an unnatural brightness to his eyes. You felt the dull ache in your chest, but if he didn’t say anything, it wasn’t a big deal, right?

When he smiled while you were working, you didn’t stop working whatever you were doing, even when the smile faded. 

When he showed up at your apartment less and less, you didn’t question it. 

You just didn’t understand the fire stoking in the back of your head meant he was angry, angry enough to get past your defenses. You didn’t understand the stuffy feeling in your lungs meant he was sad. You didn’t understand that your heart sped up because he loved you just like you loved him. 

So you didn’t understand why he left.

He told you he knew you loved him but you didn’t look at him. You argued you did look at him, every day, pontificated on his traits, but he looked at you sadly.

“I know you didn’t have a normal upbringing, but other people have feelings too.”

You yelled at him then, indignant that anyone would accuse you of not knowing that. He sighed, an indescribable expression on his face. 

“You know, but you don’t _understand_.”

You struggled to figure out the meaning behind his parting words, sending him emails he didn’t reply to and phone calls he didn’t pick up. 

Feelings…They just got you hurt. You had known that. But Jake had made you feel normal. Happy, you guess. That makes you stop; “you guess”? 

For you, emotions have always just happened. They didn’t need understanding if they were just going to give you grief, but maybe you were wrong.

After so many years, you didn’t think about your mental walls, and perhaps that was why you ignored most things that came through, the strong warning signs that Jake had been sending you all this time. You wonder what it would feel like to take down your defenses again, to open your heart to the emotions around you and actually try to understand. You wonder if you would go insane trying. 

But for Jake, you would try.


End file.
